Essays on Preaching (82)
  1. Jesus speaks His Word, and a new world order emerges, with the possibility of uniting disparate parties in the true faith.
  2. Hymns were a means by which people were brought into direct contact with the Gospel that brought justifying faith. Set to music, they could readily memorize it, take it home with them, and rehearse its messages around the hearth and at work.
  3. The pastor, then, possesses the prerogative of calling the children to himself, in the stead of Christ and after the manner of Christ, to particularly bless them with the Word.
  4. Preaching the Word made flesh liberates the imagination from this world’s false and crippling vision of reality, and once again brings the imagination into an encounter with the one and only true and living God through Immanuel: “God with us.”
  5. In the Church, the cry is, “He loves,” and it is that message which transforms our worldviews from taking to giving, from radical individualism to trans-demographic inclusivism, from selfishness to selflessness, from “tolerate my rights” to “loving rightly together.”
  6. Jerusalem, temple, and king, all three bespoke of Yahweh’s kingship, as well as of His Kingdom and presence on earth and all the blessings bound up with it.
  7. Preaching the inseparability of Jesus and Jerusalem is to proclaim God’s Messiah and the fulfillment of the Scriptures.
  8. Perhaps this year we shall see Lent reaching more toward Easter and tethered to the resurrection then the economy-car style tradition which simply terminates in Good Friday.
  9. Lent is a gift to the Church from the Church. It belongs to all Christians who desire to be conformed to the likeness of our Lord.
  10. Justification and regeneration are, therefore, necessarily connected and have profound implications upon the craft of preaching.
  11. Christ is present in the pure preaching of the gospel. And if Christ is present, then we have entered into the domain of the sacraments.
  12. In preaching, auditors are informed and instructed on hearing the voice of the Other, not themselves or contemporary resonances.
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